Desert Book - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I’ve transmigrated into an otome game I abandoned.

The game’s narrator explained the situation to me:

“This is the ACG God’s punishment for you ghosting the game. If you want to go back, you need to max out the affection levels again.”

Romancing them?

That should be a piece of cake.

I’ve already mastered the personalities of the four deities; winning them over shouldn’t be difficult at all.

“Oh, right,” the System added, “in this world, a hundred years have passed since you abandoned them. Now, all four male leads have gone completely ‘yandere’ and blackened.”

Me: “…?”

Ignoring my sudden internal scream, the System left me a single page of a Quest Book and promptly made a clean getaway.

Only a few words were written on the Quest Book:

[Romance the Deities (Blackened Version). Current Progress: 0/4]

The original otome game was called Book of the Desert.

The player’s identity is a newly born Deity from a prophecy, while the four romanceable male leads are the Present Deities of the desert.

Initially, the Present Deities found it hard to have any goodwill toward a new Deity destined to replace them, which made the early stages of the game a notorious bottleneck.

The game featured exquisite art, a brilliant plot, and characters whose reactions felt incredibly real.

The reason it never became a massive hit was precisely because of its hellish difficulty level.

Back then, the only reason I managed to clear all the character routes was by relying on the ‘Save and Load’ method.

But now…

Not only is there no save function, but all four of them have blackened.

Romance them again?

There’s no way I’m winning this.

Although the chances of success were slim, I didn’t have any other choice.

Just as I was forcing myself to pull it together and prepare to embark on my quest once more, a problem arose.

I looked at the endless swirling sands and calmly wiped my face.

“Excuse me, how am I supposed to find the targets?”

The System, having long since vanished, naturally didn’t reply.

The Quest Book in the void flickered slightly, and then-

A navigation arrow from the game appeared on the ground.

I smiled. “It wouldn’t happen to be what I think it is, would it?”

…

Dammit, it was exactly what I thought it was.

As a romance game, the first thing I had to do after transmigrating was a desert trek through the Gobi.

What in the Tears of the Kingdom is this?

Fortunately, right before I died of thirst, I finally spotted the edge of the Nile River.

But before I could squat down and drink like a beast, the originally calm Mother River suddenly exploded with giant waves.

The withered, thin wild plants on the shore suddenly surged, transforming into several thick green vines at a speed beyond human imagination. These vines intertwined and tangled with each other, weaving a bridge full of life across the water’s surface.

At the other end of the bridge, a tall figure stepped barefoot onto the green vines.

The newcomer’s golden curly hair reached down to his ankles, shimmering like the sunlit surface of the Nile River. Those emerald eyes looking at me were currently filled with a misty haze.

It looked like resentment, mixed with a sense of grievance.

His loose divine robes were draped haphazardly, trailing long behind him, making it look very inconvenient to walk in.

However, in the very next second, the being who was dozens of yards away just a moment ago appeared right in front of me in the blink of an eye.

Seeing my instinctive backward flinch, he slightly pursed his lips.

Consequently, his originally holy and beautiful face gained a touch of sensual allure due to his blood-red lips.

“It has been a hundred years. Do you have anything you want to say to me?”

Isis, the God of Life and Creation and the true “Mother” of Ancient Egypt, asked in a soft voice.

I actually did.

I glanced at the vine bridge, which served no purpose other than making a grand entrance, and then pointed with trembling fingers at his feet, which had just stepped out of the river water:

“You’ve made quite the ‘refreshing’ entrance, but what am I supposed to drink now?!”

I’m not the kind of shut-in who’s into foot-flavored tea!

Isis: “…”